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by callunavulgari



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cora Hale & Stiles Stilinski Bromance, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-10 16:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3297314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Why are you back here, anyway?” Scott asks her ten minutes later.</p><p>He’s looking at her carefully, confusion in his eyes. Like this, she can feel the pull of him — alpha calling to beta — but she ignores it, as she always does. Cora has an alpha. Mara found her and raised her as if Cora was one of her own wolves, and now she’s babysitting Cora’s big brother while she cleans up his messes for him. She loves Mara like she once loved her mother, but there’s just something about Scott. Maybe it’s that he’s the new alpha of what’s always been Hale territory. Maybe not.</p><p>“I’m here because Derek can’t be,” she says, shrugging.</p>
            </blockquote>





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**Author's Note:**

> So, I was trying to do a drabble a day type thing for February. Only uh, February 3rd was Cora/Braeden, with the prompt of 'canon'. I chose to interpret that as a canon divergent AU where Cora came back to Beacon Hills after 3A instead of Derek. It was supposed to just be a couple Braeden/Cora scenes, but then I got sidetracked by Stiles and Cora being complete bros and that uh, may have accidentally dwarfed the actual relationship. Whoops. No regrets though, because Cora and Stiles as bros is my kryptonite.
> 
> This was only partially betad, so if you notice any glaring mistakes, lemme know!

Cora comes back to Beacon Hills only to get kidnapped just outside town limits. She spends a week in a torture chamber with sneering hunters who ask her, over and over again, “Where is la loba?”  
  
“I don’t know,” she replies, until she’s deaf to the sounds of her own screams.  
  
Just when she’s beginning to lose track of the days, a smoke bomb is tossed into the room. She’s out of it enough to lose track of who’s screaming and shouting, where the gunfire is, but not _quite_ enough to miss the fact that none of the bullets seem to hit her.  
  
When the smoke clears, there’s a woman holding a smoking gun standing in the middle of the room.  
  
Cora blinks. “Who are you?”  
  
The girl turns to her, one eyebrow arched high. There are knotted white scars flowing down from her neck to her collarbone in the shape of someone’s claws. She grins at Cora, her heart pounding with adrenaline, and says, “I’m the person who just saved your ass.”  
  
.  
  
“Braeden,” the girl tells her later, as Cora is hopping off the back of her motorbike. “My name’s Braeden. Here’s my card, just in case.”  
  
“Okay,” Cora says, and blinks at the card Braeden slides into her hand. “I’ll call you, I guess.”  
  
Braeden just grins at her again, revs her engine, and takes off back the way she came.  
  
.  
  
“You should be here, Derek,” Cora tells him. “It’s not right. Something’s wrong with this town.”  
  
The connection is horrible, static hissing across the line, but she can hear Derek breathing. She knows he’s still there.  
  
“Something’s always wrong with that town,” he sighs, eventually. She can picture him now, sitting right where she left him. Maybe Mara already dropped in for the day to fill his fridge and chew him out about being a hermit. He sounds like he’s in a bad enough mood for it to have been recently.  
  
It’s Cora’s turn to sigh now. She rolls a coin across her palm and glances out the windows of Derek’s ridiculous loft. In the parking lot, the jeep has just pulled up. Stiles practically falls out of it, all legs, flailing his arms as he says something to Scott that is as quiet as a whisper from up here.  
  
“You know what I mean,” she insists as Stiles and Scott vanish up the stairs around the side of the building. They’ll be here soon. “Worse than usual. Scott, Stiles, and Allison are acting strange. Hallucinations, I think. None of them are sleeping very well.”  
  
There’s a telltale silence from Derek’s side. She can still hear him breathing. The proximity alarm starts trilling at her and she fumbles to punch it off.  
  
“You should be here,” she says again. The two boys are right outside the door, joking about something that happened in school earlier. Underneath the laughter, there’s a tension that speaks of stress and sleepless nights. She doesn’t like it. “They need you.”  
  
Derek huffs a noisy breath. “I can’t, Cora. Not yet.”  
  
He hangs up on her.  
  
“Cheater,” she hisses, turning to greet the boys outside her door.  
  
.  
  
Scott’s the one who tells her about Stiles, but Cora makes sure she’s there for the MRI anyway. Maybe Stiles doesn’t want her here, maybe he doesn’t want anyone other than Scott and his dad in there with him, but she owes him. So she waits in the lobby with a pile of Better Homes and Gardens to keep her occupied.  
  
When Scott emerges from the room, he looks drained, collapsing into the chair across from her. She offers him a flask of carefully distilled wolfsbane moonshine, unsurprised when he waves her off.  
  
“Why are you back here, anyway?” he asks her ten minutes later.  
  
He’s looking at her carefully, confusion in his eyes. Like this, she can feel the pull of him — alpha calling to beta — but she ignores it, as she always does. Cora has an alpha. Mara found her and raised her as if Cora was one of her own wolves, and now she’s babysitting Cora’s big brother while she cleans up his messes for him. She loves Mara like she once loved her mother, but there’s just something about Scott. Maybe it’s that he’s the new alpha of what’s always been Hale territory. Maybe not.  
  
“I’m here because Derek can’t be,” she says, shrugging.  
  
“Why would Derek be here though?” Scott asks, the confusion still clear in his voice. She gives him a _look_ over her magazine.  
  
“This is Derek’s home.”  
  
The pucker between Scott’s brow only grows. “But isn’t it your home too?”  
  
“No,” she says sharply. “Beacon Hills is in Derek’s bones. You— your little pack, they’re his family now, even if he won’t admit it. I’m here as a placeholder until he gets his shit together enough to come back. That’s all.”  
  
“But—” Scott starts, something like alarm in his voice.  
  
The power cuts out with a sound like a dying cat. Neither of them speak much after that.  
  
.  
  
The nogitsune is too clever by far, carting Stiles’ body around and _using_ it, like the creature knows just how much of a weak point Stiles Stilinski is to the McCall pack. Cora spends her time tracking the creature with Argent and the Sheriff, cursing Derek for not being here.  
  
“It’s Stiles,” she tells him over the phone. “The nogitsune possessed Stiles.”  
  
“Stiles?” Derek snorts. “What would it want with Stiles? Why wouldn’t it take someone with a little more…”  
  
“Spark,” she finishes for him.  
  
It gets into all of their heads and creates chaos on a massive scale. By the time it’s all over, they’re exhausted, licking their wounds and mourning their dead.  
  
The night after they take care of it, Cora crawls in through Stiles’ window.  
  
“You can’t make me sleep,” he tells her, not meeting her eyes.  
  
“Wasn’t planning on it,” she responds coolly, flopping down onto the edge of his bed next to him. Deftly, she produces a pack of cards.  
  
“I don’t need your pity either,” he says sharply, finally turning to look at her. There’s a darkness in his eyes that wasn’t there before. He still looks like he’s dying, but there’s a flush of color in his cheeks that makes her think that just maybe, they’re almost out of the woods.  
  
“When I was ten, I listened to my entire family burn to death while I sat outside, completely helpless,” she deadpans, divvying the cards out. “Do you really think I’m the type of person to pity _anyone_?”  
  
A moment passes. Eventually, the fight goes out of him. He gathers the cards up and glances at them. “So what are we playing?”  
  
She grins around a mouthful of fangs. “Go Fish.”  
  
.  
  
Three weeks later, Kate Argent kidnaps her.  
  
Two _months_ later, Cora wakes up to Braeden and Stiles crouched over her. They’re in the Beacon Hills high school parking lot. She feels a bit like she got hit by a truck.  
  
“What happened?” she moans, accepting Stiles’ help up.  
  
“You were a badass ten year old,” is what Stiles tells her, his arm around her waist. Braeden closes in from the other side and helps prop her up.  
  
“Yeah,” she agrees, confused. “I was. What of it?”  
  
A spark of panic goes through her at the idea that maybe she traveled through time and fucked up the multiverse and they’re just too polite to tell her. But then she realizes that no, they would definitely tell her. Stiles is about the farthest thing from polite and Braeden doesn’t know Cora enough to bother trying.  
  
“It’s a long story,” Stiles hedges, the three of them shambling towards the jeep like a three legged monster.  
  
Cora snorts. “When has that ever stopped you?”  
  
So they tell her.  
  
.  
  
Cora’s tried to avoid contact with Peter at all costs since she got back from South America. It becomes a moot point after the theft, because he finds her.  
  
“I think we should hire that girlfriend of yours,” he says one day, sauntering into Derek’s loft like he owns it. He doesn’t. This building belongs to Derek and Derek alone.  
  
“With what money?” she snorts, flipping idly through a spanish dictionary she’d found beside Derek’s bed. What a nerd. “And she’s not my girlfriend. Now get out.”  
  
.  
  
“I told you I’d call,” Cora says when Braeden picks up.  
  
Braeden laughs. “You did. But the important question is: _why_ did you call me?”  
  
“My uncle wants to hire you to find Kate,” she explains, scrunching her nose up. Just the thought of doing what Peter wants is vexing.  
  
There’s a sound over the line that reminds her of the way Braeden’s motorcycle had felt under her. Her heart ratchets up.  
  
“And what do you want?” Braeden asks, her voice just shy of teasing. Flirting.  
  
“I want a lot of things,” Cora admits, grimacing when she swipes her finger across the counter.  
  
“But?”  
  
“I want to find Kate before the bitch tracks down my brother. I know that she didn’t intend to find me in the loft. She was looking for him, to get what she wanted.”  
  
“Why bother with him? She got what she wanted, didn’t she?”  
  
“I don’t think she did. The Benefactor wanted our money. Kate… she was looking for something else. I remember her being upset that she couldn’t find it.”  
  
“And you really think she could track him down?”  
  
Cora thinks of Mara and her pack, huddled away in their little corner of the world. Hidden by mountains and rainforests, their safe haven. “No,” she says. “I don’t think so. But I don’t want her to get the chance to try.”  
  
“So you want me to find Kate.”  
  
It isn’t a question this time.  
  
“Yes,” she sighs. “I want you to find Kate.”  
  
.  
  
Humanity is like a rope.  
  
When Derek was in high school, he went through a Nietzsche phase. She very clearly remembers him sitting down at the breakfast table one day, passing her an orange, and saying, “Humanity is like walking on a rope over a great abyss.”  
  
“What would you know about humanity?” Peter had snorted, and then the rest was just the noise of early morning bickering.  
  
Humanity is exactly like a rope. A very thin, fraying rope that won’t hold her weight. The abyss swallows up her senses, drowning her and leaving everything behind just slightly askew.  
  
“Being human isn’t so bad,” Stiles says, cuffing her gently on the shoulder. She’s sitting on his bed, hands pressed between her knees, and she wants to… she doesn’t know. She wants to go home, back to her pack. She wants to call Mara and her brother.  
  
It’s funny. She’s spent all this time trying to get Derek to come to her, but now that she actually has something that she can use to get him here, she doesn’t want it. She doesn’t want to force Derek back to Beacon Hills because she got a nasty case of humanity via his psychotic ex.  
  
“Maybe not to you,” she whispers, because it actually sounds like a whisper now. Before, they had been as loud as shouting. Now they’re just a wisp of sound that she can barely hear. Her ears are clogged with cotton, her nose stifled and useless. She doesn’t want to know if her healing is gone yet. “But to me… Stiles, I’ve been a wolf my entire life. I’ve never even been sick before. How am I supposed to deal with… this?”  
  
“Cora,” he says, turning her bodily until she’s looking at him. She stares, in wonder or horror, at his hands — his _human_ hands — which had moved her so easily. “Cora! Look at me. You are a Hale. You’ll get through this, just like you’ve gotten through everything else.”  
  
“Being a Hale isn’t exactly the assurance it used to be,” she drawls, her voice mortifyingly wobbly. But she feels better, less like she’s about to shatter into a million pieces.  
  
“Yeah right,” he snorts, slapping her across the back. “You and your brother are the most stubborn survival types I know. And don’t even get me started on how your uncle _actually came back from the dead_ like some kind of comic book villain.”  
  
For a moment, there’s silence. The room is loud with it.  
  
“Cora, you’ll be fine.”  
  
She sniffs, drawing her shoulders back. “I can’t believe I came to you for advice. What is my life coming to?”  
  
He just looks at her, face crinkled ridiculously. It’s like he can’t choose what emotion he wants to express, so he’s tried to paste every single one of them on his face at the same time. He looks like an idiot.  
  
“It is a little weird,” he admits, once the wounded indignation has eased itself out of his features. He gestures her closer, as if about to impart some great wisdom, and confesses in a stage whisper, “For a moment, I thought you might actually have feelings.”  
  
She punches him in the shoulder.  
  
.  
  
“You’re telling me you’ve got nothing on Kate Argent?” Cora asks, dumbfounded.  
  
“Nothing conclusive anyway.” She shoots Cora a look, crossing her arms as she leans back against the wall. “These things take time.”  
  
“I don’t have time,” Cora growls, flexing her fingers. Reaching for the wolf is like searching a pool of deep water without going in. It hurts. She doesn’t like it.  
  
“Hey,” Braeden says, her voice pitched soft with… what? Concern? Stiles is concerned about her. Derek is concerned about her. Mara is concerned about her. No one else gets that privilege. “Are you okay?”  
  
Is she okay? For all that Stiles has bolstered her confidence, she’s afraid. She doesn’t like feeling fragile, and humanity is about as fragile as she can get without being in a coma.  
  
“No,” she answers eventually. “I’m not. I— what Kate did to me is still happening. I need to find her. Soon.”  
  
Braeden cocks her head. “What exactly is still happening to you?”  
  
Cora doesn’t respond.  
  
“Cora. Show me your eyes.”  
  
“No,” she hisses. “I don’t want to.”  
  
Braeden’s hand is on her arm. It makes her want to flinch away and run screaming in the other direction. But there’s some part of her, distant and buried deep, that wants to pull her closer. So she compromises, leaning into Braeden’s touch just the slightest bit.  
  
“We’ll find her,” Braeden tells her, hand sliding down to Cora’s wrist and squeezing. “I promise.”  
  
Cora sighs, suddenly exhausted. “You just want to get paid.”  
  
She means for it to sound teasing, but it comes out flat. She can feel Braeden’s eyes on her, pinning her in place like she’s an exotic butterfly and the floor of this loft is a trophy.  
  
When Braeden leaves the loft five minutes later, Cora can’t decide what she wants more. To go after her, or call her brother.  
  
.  
  
The next time Cora sees Braeden, she’s lying in a pool of her own blood.  
  
.  
  
“You know,” Cora says when she notices Braeden stirring on Cora’s borrowed bed. “It’s not as easy to carry someone when you’re human.”  
  
Braeden yawns hugely. Her eyes are still sleepy, not quite awake. “You’re just not used to it.”  
  
Cora snorts. “I don’t think I’ll ever be used to it.”  
  
Braeden stares at her, gaze sharpening as the minutes drag by, her brain waking up. “Hopefully you won’t have to,” she says at last, groaning when she throws her legs over the side of the bed. “Until then, would you like some help being human?”  
  
“What’s to help?” she laughs. “I’m defenseless.”  
  
Braeden’s eyes are very dark. “Do I look defenseless?”  
  
“No, but—”  
  
“Then stop whining. Until you get your powers back, I’m here to help.” She smirks thinly at Cora, reaching over and flicking her in the nose. Mischievously, she adds, “You could say that I’m protecting my investment.”  
  
“So, I’m just your investment, huh,” Cora mutters rebelliously. “Sucks for you, I guess. I hear Hales have a bad habit of dropping dead.”  
  
Even as she says it, she knows she’s gone too far. Something inside her ripples uncomfortably. Guilt, she thinks, for talking about her family that way. For talking about her mother that way. She’s spent so long being angry at them for dying that it takes this, one careless mention of their deaths, to realize just how hurt she really is.  
  
“I’m going to go,” Braeden says, breaking her out of her thoughts. “And tomorrow morning I’m going to come back here with a bag of guns, and we are going to teach you how to shoot.”  
  
Cora thinks of Derek, who hates guns. Derek, who she hasn’t called since she became human. She wonders if Derek felt her disappear when she lost all ties to her wolf. If Mara and the rest of the pack did. Wonders if they’re on their way to get her, unknowingly walking right into Kate’s hands.  
  
Cora nods, firmly ignoring the curve of Braeden’s ass when she bends over to slip her feet into her boots.  
  
“And Cora,” Braeden calls when she’s most of the way out the door. Cora turns to look, curious. “You don’t have to just be an investment. Not if you don’t want to be.”  
  
She slams the door shut behind her.  
  
.  
  
“No, hold it like this.”  
  
Cora hisses, using one hand to pluck at the gun, as if its a goddamn cello and not a deadly weapon. “I’m trying.”  
  
Braeden gives her a flat look. “No you aren’t. Your grip is weak and your stance is completely off base, but you aren’t listening to me because you still think you’re better than this.”  
  
Cora glares, puffing up angrily. “I never said that!”  
  
The flatness of the look morphs into one of derision. “You didn’t have to.”  
  
“Fine,” she seethes, slamming the gun down onto the table. Lucky she never figured out how to turn the safety off. “Tell me more about what you think that I think. Please. If you’ve got an inside look into my brain, I’d really like to know what else you’ve learned.”  
  
“I think you’re angry,” Braeden says immediately, taking a step closer. It’s a step too close as far as Cora’s concerned. There’s a fire blazing in her gut that is usually a steady simmer.  
  
“Oh, well done! Ten points to Slytherin!”  
  
Braeden snorts. “You’ve been hanging out with that Stilinski kid too often.”  
  
The fire scorches. “And so what if I have!?”  
  
“I didn’t say it was a bad thing.”  
  
“So I’m angry, I think I’m better than you, and I hang out with Stiles too often. What else do you think I know?”  
  
Braeden takes another step. If she wanted to, Cora could reach out and touch her. Instead, she clenches her hands tight at her sides. Her decision doesn’t seem to matter though, because Braeden makes the move for her.  
  
“I think,” she says softly, reaching out to cup a hand around Cora’s hip. Her thumb slides against the sliver of skin exposed there, a gentle caress that does little more than ignite the fires further. “That you’re frightened. There’s no shame in that. You don’t want to die, but more than that, you’re afraid that like this, you won’t be able to protect the few people in this town that you’ve grown to care about.”  
  
Cora sneers. “And who, by all means, have I grown to care about in this godforsaken town? My brother is with my pack thousands of miles away. My family is _ash_. Who exactly,” she hisses. “Do you think is left for me here?”  
  
Braeden doesn’t blink.  
  
“The Stilinski boy, for one. Scott McCall, for another.” She takes a breath and says, like a question, “Me?”  
  
Cora freezes. Suddenly, Braeden’s hand on her hip feels like a brand. Her tongue feels thick in her mouth. She has to lick her lips twice before she can speak. “You said that I don’t have to be an investment if I don’t want to.”  
  
Braeden nods. “I did.”  
  
“So,” Cora whispers. “If I’m not your investment, where does that leave me?”  
  
Braeden smirks, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “Guess we’ll just have to find out, won’t we?”  
  
“Guess so,” Cora breathes, and closes the space between them.  
  
.  
  
“Damn,” Stiles says the next day when she tells him. “Get it, girl.”  
  
Cora rolls her eyes and wonders just when Stiles Stilinski became her best friend.  
  
.  
  
“So, you’re not worth fifteen million dollars anymore.”  
  
Cora rolls over, mouthing sleepily at Braeden’s collarbone. “Mm,” she hums. “Were you tempted?”  
  
Braeden laughs and rolls them, until she’s sitting atop Cora’s hips. She’s glorious like this, all dark skin, flushed cheeks, and laughing eyes. Cora slides her hands up Braeden’s thighs, until they’re framing her waist.  
  
Braedens leans down to kiss her. Against Cora’s lips, she whispers, “Not by the money.”  
  
.  
  
“You can’t tell Malia that she’s your cousin,” Stiles had said to her, before her first and only meeting with the girl.  
  
“She’s my cousin?” she’d replied, raising an eyebrow.  
  
“That’s my girl,” Stiles had crowed and hung up on her.  
  
“No really,” she’d said to the phone blinking ‘call ended’ up at her. “She’s my cousin?”  
  
Now, Malia is standing in front of her, arms crossed across her chest. Things are fucked to hell and back. Cora’s name unlocked the last part of the deadpool, Scott’s been kidnapped, and they’re about to take a roadtrip to Mexico. Just another day in Beacon Hills.  
  
“You’re probably going to die, you know,” Malia says to her. There’s a shrewd, unapologetic look in her eyes. It should remind her of Peter, but it doesn’t. Mostly, it reminds her of her own mother.  
  
Beside Cora, Braeden twitches. It’s the smallest movement, barely noticeable. But Cora has spent the last week and a half memorizing Braeden’s body with her hands, her eyes, her mouth. She notices.  
  
“Maybe,” Cora shrugs.  
  
“And you’re still going?”  
  
Cora smiles at her. “It’s what my brother would do.”  
  
She thinks the word, _placeholder_ , and has no idea when that stopped being true.  
  
.  
  
Braeden drives. Cora sits in the back with Stiles and a brand new out of control baby wolf. She doesn’t think of her own mortality once. She thinks of Stiles’. Of Braeden’s. She breathes a mantra her family has been telling her since she was a baby.  
  
“It’s not about power,” she tells him. “It’s not really about control either. Control is overrated. What it’s really about is falling.”  
  
“How exactly is that supposed to help me?” Liam growls.  
  
“Because it’s about rising again, as well. It’s about trust. Trust your wolf, but more than that, trust your _humanity_. Now, repeat after me.”  
  
.  
  
“That was good back there,” Stiles tells her later, once Liam is calmer. “I had a backup plan, but turns out I didn’t need it.”  
  
Curious despite herself, she asks, “What was the backup plan?”  
  
“Another mantra,” he says, waving a hand dismissively. “But failing that, leaping out of a moving vehicle. Like I said, I’m glad yours worked.”  
  
“What can I say,” she purrs, setting her feet down on the bench beside Liam. “Humanity is enlightening.”  
  
.  
  
 _Pain_ is enlightening. Cora has experienced pain over the years. She’s been tortured, she’s been shot, she’s broken countless bones. It’s somehow different, however, when the pain feels as final as this.  
  
Braeden is on one side, Stiles on the other. The berserker is gone, leaving behind a great hole in her gut.  
  
“Cora,” Stiles says, voice wrecked. His hands are covered in her blood. “What do I do? How do I—”  
  
“Go,” she gasps. Her hands are trembling. She wants Mara and her mother. She wants sticky summer days spent playing in the rainforest with Mara’s youngest. She wants to feel the leaves of the preserve under her feet. She wants Laura, who always knew how to make her laugh. She wants Stiles to stay with her, him and Braeden boxing her in from either side, protecting her.  
  
Cora wants her _brother_.  
  
“Save Scott,” she says around a sob, because it’s what Derek would say. Selfless Derek with his noble intentions.  
  
 _I’m just a placeholder_ , she thinks.  
  
“Go!” she shouts, tears in her eyes. “Save him. Braeden will keep me safe.”  
  
Everyone else is already gone, but Stiles lingers still. Hesitating, looking at his red hands. She forces herself to concentrate on Braeden’s hands and the way her chest is hitching with quiet sobs. That way, it’s not as hard to listen to the sounds of Stiles walking away.  
  
“Hey,” she whispers, once Stiles is several paces away. “If— if I don’t make it, tell Derek it wasn’t his fault, okay?”  
  
Stiles’ mouth twists, wry. “I can tell him that, but that won’t make him believe it.”  
  
“Make him believe it,” she hisses.  
  
There’s a moment. He nods and then he vanishes inside the temple.  
  
.  
  
“Please don’t do this,” Braeden breathes. Her hands are still holding Cora’s guts in, but they’re shaking now. “You can’t.”  
  
“Braeden,” Cora chides. Her head feels heavy. “I thought you didn’t do attachment.”  
  
“I don’t normally make people into more than an investment either,” she sniffs. Braeden wipes her nose, leaving a streak of blood behind.  
  
Cora smiles, thinly. “Guess I’m just lucky then.”  
  
Kate’s voice sounds from somewhere behind them, mocking. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” she calls. “Have you brought me Derek yet, little sister?”  
  
“Her obsession with your brother is a bit worrying,” Braeden whispers.  
  
Cora tries to laugh, but it comes out as little more than a whisper.  
  
“I’ll be right back,” Braeden says, rearranging Cora’s hands so that they take place of her own. “Keep your hands here. Press hard.”  
  
 _No_ , Cora wants to say. _Don’t leave me._  
  
She stays silent.  
  
Braeden kisses her, hard and fast. It’s good, really good. The only thing that would make it better would be if she stayed.  
  
“Right back,” Braeden promises her again. “I promise.”  
  
Cora doesn’t say I love you, because she doesn’t. Not yet. If they had more time, maybe she could have. But as she watches Braeden walk away from her, she regrets not having the chance to say it.  
  
 _I don’t want to die alone_ , she thinks. _I want my brother. Mara. Braeden. Stiles._  
  
 _Mother._  
  
She sucks in a breath.  
  
Lets it out.  
  
She doesn’t take another one.  
  
.  
  
Her brother is there when Cora wakes up. She doesn’t really feel like she was sleeping, but she must have been, because the scenery all around her has changed. Also, she doesn’t appear to be human if the four paws are any indication.  
  
Simultaneously, she gets a thrill of excitement and dread at the thought of sharing something like this with her mother and Laura.  
  
She shakes her head, making herself focus on the sight of Kate taunting her brother and Braeden.  
  
“You were dead,” Kate says several moments later, her face smeared with blood.  
  
“No,” Cora growls, shedding the wolf’s skin like a pair of dirty sweats. “I was _evolving_.”  
  
.  
  
The sun on her face has never felt better than it does in that moment, standing outside that hellish church with her toes curling and uncurling in the sand. When Stiles comes trailing out after Scott, his face is drawn and pale. He’s in mourning, already, waiting to see her body on the pavement where he left it.  
  
He lifts his chin, gaze automatically going to the spot where he’d left her only hours before. For a moment, they zero in on the blood still smeared across the rocks. He blinks, swiveling his head to the left. Then to the right.  
  
Beside her, Braeden snorts when Stiles’ eyes suddenly lock on Cora. His eyes go wide, a huge grin crossing his face as he does a little jump of excitement.  
  
He doesn’t walk towards her. He runs. She’s already bracing herself for the tackle when he just stops, eyes wide with a different kind of horror. His hands flap wildly, hovering just over her arms, like he wants to hug her but can’t close the space.  
  
“Why are you naked?” he shrieks.  
  
Braeden laughs. “You _just_ noticed that?”  
  
“Hey,” Stiles protests. “I was overcome with joy! I came out expecting to find a corpse, okay? Forgive me for overlooking a little bit of nudity.”  
  
“My clothes were shredded and I didn’t bother bringing an extra,” Cora shrugs, narrowing her eyes. “Now am I going to get that hug or what?”  
  
Stiles bounces in place, wavering with indecision. He cuts a look at Braeden who laughs and holds up her hands. “Don’t look at me, boy wonder. Girl wants a hug.”  
  
All traces of hesitation vanish immediately, and he flings his arms around her, squeezing her happily. She goes with it, picking him up and spinning him around, because she can. She could have probably done it as a human, but it’s different like this, easier.  
  
To the side, she hears Derek asking, “Did I miss something?”  
  
Braeden snorts. “You missed _all the things_ , big brother.”  
  
“Ours is a delightful broship,” Stiles murmurs into her shoulder. He spits out a piece of her hair. “Make of it what you will.”  
  
She laughs, practically giddy, and because she can, pulls Derek and Braeden into the hug too.  
  
.  
  
In the van afterwards, Derek and Stiles box her in from either side. She feels a bit like a sardine, but it’s good. Liam, Kira, and Scott are on the bench across from them. Malia had taken the seat up front with Braeden.  
  
Chris and the Calaveras have done them the courtesy of carting Peter back to Beacon Hills for them before they go off on their cross-country goosechase after Kate. She’s thankful, that she can spend this time absorbing her pack’s scent without the taint of her uncle clouding it.  
  
“So,” Scott says, snuggling into Kira’s side. His eyes dart to Derek, then back to her. “You’re not a placeholder anymore.”  
  
There’s caution in his voice, a question there.  
  
Cora thinks of Mara and her pack, back in South America. She thinks of the forests there, so unlike the ones back home. She thinks of the kids that she’s played with since she was eleven years old, the ones she’s babysat, and raced with on full moons.  
  
She thinks of Beacon Hills, and how, despite it all, she just thought the word _home_ in correlation with it.  
  
She catches Braeden glancing at her in the rearview mirror, and caught off guard, smiles. She’s helpless not to.  
  
Cora takes stock of her choices, family new and old. Stiles takes her hand and squeezes.  
  
She shrugs, leaning into her brother’s shoulder.  
  
“You know,” she says. “I never really was.”


End file.
